The basis of this project was to work with bringing together a range of mediums into one material based final piece. Week one entailed introductory workshops in silicone mould making, woodwork, spot welding, soldering and stone carving. The traditional aspect of stone carving appealed to me, and helped me to realise that material based work is more suited to me. The textures that can be created in soldering, carving and casting surfaces with silicone is something that I will take forward to future projects; for this one I decided to focus on creating structure from wood and making multiple joins to create geometric shapes.
The artist Ted Larsen creates optical illusion looking geometric, industrial sculptures which influenced my work in this project. He works with a range of colour, but fairly subdued colours much of the time which appeals to me. The industrial look is an aesthetic that I have always appreciated. I began by creating a hexagonal prism out of wood to practice working with angles and making joins in wood. Using the bandsaw has given me great confidence in doing more ambitious sculptural works now. For my final outcome I decided to make a triangular based pyramid out to wood which would then be the main structure of my piece. I later stained and varnished all of the wood to make the sculpture more refined.
For this development, I decided to build on what I had done during the ‘Object and action’ project and continue looking at light and reflection. After visiting the ‘Song Dong’ exhibition at the Royal Academy, I decided to experiment with using glass and creating stained glass pieces. The exhibition made me feel very excited about creating and heavily inspired me to continue to work in the medium of glass. The main mediums I worked with for the rest of the project was wood and glass. Practicing working with the stained glass was more time consuming than I had anticipated - the cutting of the glass, to wrapping it in copper tape and soldering it together was challenging for a first attempt. I decided to go for an abstract design to make it simpler. The combination of shapes makes the piece as a whole look very geometric but also communicating a feeling of entrapment, with an abstract piece hanging in the centre of a regular, pyramid shape. Feedback suggested that I should take this juxtaposition between delicate and strong structure further. I would like to make the piece as a whole more large scale, even play around with the materials used such as replacing the glass with hard candy.
As I had spare time at the end of this project, I decided to re-use some scrap MDF wood to make some more geometric compositions. After feedback from colleagues, I decided it would be best to stain these geometric compositions the same colour as my wooden structures. I have learned that main thing to consider if the way my work is curated as some people said that the wooden floorboards that my work was placed on dejected from the colour of my wooden sculpture, however others said that it was effective as the sculpture seemed like an extension to the floor. However, placing my sculpture on the floor took away from the focus on the piece which was the stained glass window, which should have been higher up so that light could chime through and reflect the colours. I would like to play around with the light and colour a bit more. This would be aided by perhaps placing a piece of mirrored glass in the base of the triangular pyramid.. The seemingly toned down colours of the glass become very bright once light is applied so it shows that the piece could be potentially transformed depending on how it is displayed. I should photograph the piece in different locations such as in the woods to see how this changes the connotations of the piece as well as it’s appearance.
